TY - GEN A1 - Kovanen, Sunna A1 - Mihály, Melinda T1 - Mobilizing for Social and Solidarity Economies in (Rural) Peripheries T2 - 2022 RSA Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) Conference Programme N2 - The post-socialist transformation of Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies implied their (re)integration into global capitalism as “dependent market economies” that are dominated by foreign direct investment and have only a limited degree of economic sovereignty. This development was accompanied by internal polarisation and peripheralization, which were amplified by the steady erosion of the European social model linked to the financial crisis in 2008. Europe had entered the age of austerity, and the pain generated by these adjustments and the subsequent political upheaval imposed significant legitimacy challenges to the political elite and its crisis management strategy in Eastern and Western Europe alike. The rise of the radical right is connected to this political discontent of the inhabitants of peripheralized areas, and to sociocultural and material deprivation in internal peripheries characterised by economic stagnation and selective outmigration. In this session we look for contributions on alternative, bottom-up mobilising and it´s potential of channeling this discontent described above towards globally aligned local struggles for a socially and environmentally just transition. Thus, we call for research- and practice-based contributions related to the organising, upscaling and political struggle of social and solidarity economy initiatives in rural and regional development. We aim at diversifying the discourse on rural engagement in CEE, typically framed as “anti-modernist” and “non innovative”. Such narratives neglect the political abandonment of the inhabitants of peripheries and the silent sustainability practices, such as food self-provisioning still characteristic in both rural and urban areas in CEE. Western theories of civil society are unable to grasp the richness of community self-organising connected to livelihood in CEE, thus often portraying the civil society in CEE as “weak”. In the former Eastern Germany, instead, a new narrative focusing on rural social innovation via “spatial pioneers” has succeeded in turning the “anti-modern” image of rural areas into a positive and agile space of transformation. While bearing possibilities of popularising sustainable local transition, the focus on young and educated initiators from urban areas might further marginalise the silent and everyday engagement of the existing civil society and drive forth a new kind of rural gentrification. This session aims at enlightening these often tense and complex relations of the social and solidarity economy with its broader institutional and social contexts in rural areas. The question can be approached at least from threefold perspectives: a) Success of social movements in relation to their resource-mobilisation strategies (including financial resources, the networks they are embedded in and their social base), the political opportunity structure they are embedded in and the cultural framing of their message to multiple, simultaneously local and multiscalar audiences. b) Encounters between the globally connected civic environmental movements with the local residents, and in particular with the locally embedded, silent sustainability practices. Addressing joint practices, aims or campaigns but also tensions related to e.g. ethno-nationalist ideologies underlying the tradition of environmental protection. c) Opportunities and challenges to social and solidarity economy initiatives to prioritise global ecological concerns and their local manifestations and respect for non-human beings in all areas of economic organising. We invite papers focusing on social and solidarity economy initiatives and their potential to mobilize the politically abandoned inhabitants of (rural) peripheries in CEE and beyond. KW - peripheralization, social economy, solidarity economy, informality Y1 - 2022 UR - https://events.rdmobile.com/Sessions/Details/1497801 ER -